We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Vincenzo Marchese Ragona. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Vincenzo below.

Vincenzo, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

One of the most exciting projects I’ve worked on has surely been “Machinae Memoriae”. In this project now at least 3 years old I’ve used artificial intelligence to create new memories starting off old ones.

During my third year of university, we were tasked with a more “artsy” project: we had to investigate in any way whatsoever the concept of time. I have to point out that my first attempt at it was a failure that resulted in me not passing that class.

That in fact gave me the strength to dig deeper and pushed me to really explore the boundaries of my practice and started experimenting with tools and mediums that at the time I had never used before. I just finished writing my dissertation about AI and Creativity I had the chance to interview some really interesting people and my brain was filled with notions and exciting ideas of how this tool was about to change the world forever. I came across a really interesting Ted talk by Lila Davachi a researcher from Columbia University where she was pointing out, in a very intricate train of thought, how at the end of our life all we want is just more memories with our dearest. That stroke me like lightning, what if was able to create new memories from old ones?

During his 20s/30s my Godfather started documenting his life with a Canon point-and-shoot he would document, beautiful exotics landscapes, summer evenings with friends, day out with the family in the woodlands, and random people. It was an immense archive of his life. Fun facts the last picture of the archive was me being born, from that moment he switched to a digital camera (a bit sad). He spent years digitising and organizing those pictures into short movies that he would carefully mix with music and project during family events. Sounds weird but trust me the result is actually quite amusing. I grew up watching this short movie, it was like jumping into a life I’ve obviously never lived but somehow I felt nostalgic about it.

Inspired by that feeling I asked permission to gain access to that impressive archive. I was rewarded with almost 15k pictures on 35mm film. My plan was to create an entirely new photobook with images never seen before that would move something inside the viewer, I was in fact looking to recreate a sense of nostalgia.

At the time Dall-E or Midjourney didn’t exist yet and my process was really different from how you would use any AI image synthesiser tool today. I dumped all those images into a GAN2 engine and let the machine dream about new stories, I drifted around that latent space for days being amazed by the endless possibilities. I was really surprised to see that I could recognise situations, faces, and colours from the original pictures, they were completely different from the original sources but still so similar.

Originally I was going to create a physical photobook but it was March 2020 and Covid had just hit the UK, everything was shut down and it had become really difficult to create anything difficult, my professor invited me to start thinking digitally. It made sense, to be honest, those images were created by a machine why try to change the nature of it?

I so tried to recreate a digital brain and used my role of the “Selector” to group those images that made sense together and added sounds, keywords and triggers that would recall a specific memory. This was the official description of the project:

“A foray into AI-generated memories, Machinae Memoriae is comprised from a database of more than 1,200 pictures. These moments have been captured over 20 years and contain woodland trips, dinners with friends, sunsets by the coast and things that occurred during those halcyon days. These images are now narrating new stories, generating new memories from old tales.”

It was a success! I somehow think those images already existed in the nether somewhere, I was just lucky enough to find them. I didn’t try to shape them to my taste. I just let them be.

This is how Machinae Memoriae was born. I’m sure this text isn’t making much justice so I invite you to have a look yourself and search it on the web.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Vincenzo Marchese Ragona is a Graphic Designer investigating the discipline of visual communication across various mediums and technologies. His array of clients includes different industry leaders such as Apple, Adobe, Paramount, Braun, Monotype, Nike, Sundance, Spotify and many others.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

As a creative worker is vital that we keep our minds healthy and happy. An unhappy mind cannot create good work. Let us then be mindful of the type of work e create and the variety of clients we work for. Are they aligned with your ideals? Does that make you happy? Of course, money is essential we all have bills to pay, but what’s money when you’re miserable because a client makes you feel that way? Keep a hobby that isn’t directly linked with your “creative” job and keep yourself around inspiring people, their wins are your wins and vice versa, visit museums and travel lots if you can. I don’t really have a mission, I learn along the way and these are the tricks I’ve learned so far!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Learning for me is the most rewarding aspect for sure. Also the variety of tools and projects we can work on. I try to learn something new for every project, nothing really stays the same so it shouldn’t be your practice. Push your limits constantly, it’s so easy to learn new stuff, and the community it’s so great and inspiring. Don’t be scared to ask questions, and to fail.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://vmragona.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vmragona/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vmragona/
• Other: https://vmragona.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/VincenzoMarcheseRagona_Reel2022.mp4